Beta Beat: Parallels releases Beta2, with Shared Folders improvements

Steve

You can disable all of the sharing and IIRC, even adjust a level of security that handles the amount of interaction between windows and OSX

I hope they still support those of us who like Windows tucked away in its own window, maligned and mistrusted until it's time to come out for cross browser testing. I've been putting off upgrading Parallels simply because the idea of all these features that allow Windows to "share" (read: destroy) my previous data terrify me.

Also, see here for a couple of comments on a MacNN article about CNET's benchmarks:

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/08/16/fusion.vs.parallels/&startNumber=20#comments

I think the price-point may be a factor - it's to Parallels advantage, since they came up with it, but to VMware's disadvantage because they have to fit in with it to be competitive.

I would *really* like to see someone benchmark Mac OS X, Boot Camp, Fusion and Parallels fairly on a lower-end Mac. It is perfectly possible to make OS X, Fusion and Parallels use one core only, and I would imagine that it's possible on Windows as well. Only then, and with a full set of benchmarks (office productivity, graphics manipulation, multimedia and video work, networking, 3D editing and rendering etc.), would we be able to make some sort of comparison.

Sam

henrrik,

Thanks for posting that link. I agree that 1GB can oftentimes not be enough even for OS X alone, but then again I'm the sort of person who tends to have quite a few things open at once - I have 7 apps open on my dock (which is a tad less than usual), and 17 things on the right of my menu bar. I find that I have to close most of this to be able to use Vista acceptably under Parallels.

That was a rather interesting benchmark you sent. As always, one has to be suspicious of statistics (there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, as they say!) - and indeed the only benchmark there that allows Parallels and Fusion to be directly compared is the single-core Cinebench test which does show Fusion to slightly outperform Parallels.

Nevertheless, since VMware have chosen to sell Fusion at the same price point as Parallels Desktop, they have ostensibly entered the same market. Pitting Fusion and Parallels against each other on an octo-core Xeon is all well and good, and does undeniably show that on such a machine Fusion performs miles better because of its multiple-core support - but such a configuration costs more than 3 times as much as many of Apple's most popular consumer models, and these virtualisation products *are at consumer prices*.

Mainly, I'm just annoyed that people around here always seem to be so down on Parallels. It's always worked for me, and it's always worked better and faster than Fusion. Perhaps it's just me...

Sam

Sam,

1 GB is barely enough for OS X, let alone virtualizing Vista.
My experience (on a MacBook and a MacBook Pro) is that VMware is a tad faster and more responsive, and these benchmarks seem to support that:

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9760910-1.html

Fusion has always been far too slow for me - sure 1GB of RAM isn't strictly enough to virtualise Vista with anyway, but Parallels performs much better under these conditions than Fusion does.

Early versions of Parallels were a bit rough around the edges, perhaps the 1.0 series should have been betas - but Fusion was rougher at first and coming from VMware I wouldn't have expected that. VMware have some really good products, and the free Player and Server were better, even in beta, than Fusion.

Maybe VMware performs a little more acceptably on really expensive Macs like the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro, but on my insignificant little first-gen MacBook Parallels clearly beats Fusion.

Sam

Thanks very much guys for the heads up on vmware, I will check it out. I like Parallels, but feel like there should be a better way...

george, i too have been a paying customer of parallels since pre 1.0, but switched to vmware fusion for the same reason. it was a complete waste of money for 3.0 and i was an idiot for purchasing it so quick without reading or trying it out myself. anyway, i've been happy with fusion so far.

and don't forget, not only can you get to your home folder, but so can any viruses in windows. You pay for your convenience.

Personally, I tend to turn off the default drag-and-drop-file-sharing capabilities, and use one specific folder under my MacOSX home directory that gets shared between the two OSes.

As an early Parallels Desktop customer (since v1.0 pre-order) I can only recommned VMWare as the only decent virtualizaction solution for the Mac, no matter how much bells and whistles Parallels team put on their software anymore.

Parallels Desktop 3.0 was a monney grabber who made no real improvements over previous 2.x and I think it was a quick and dirty response to VMWare Fusion Beta software.

So, if you want things to just work, go VMWare. I'm a happy customer of them for now. Sadly, Parallels didn't even reply to my inquiry of reselling the license that I'm not using anymore.